She told him, “Have a seat.”
He seemed undecided, but finally took the couch across from the dogs. He didn’t sit the way men usually sit—legs apart, arms spread along the back of the couch. He was a big guy, but he appeared to work very hard not to take up a lot of space.
Sara asked, “Have you had supper?”
He shook his head and she put the pizza box on the coffee table. The dogs were very interested in this development, so Sara sat on the couch with them in order to keep them in line. She waited for Will to take a slice, but he just sat there opposite, hands resting on his knees.
He asked, “Is that your husband’s ring?”
Startled, she turned to the ring, which was flat on the polished mahogany. The letter was on the other end of the mantel, and Sara had a flash of concern that Will would figure out what was inside.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “I shouldn’t pry.”
“It’s his,” she told him, realizing that she’d been pressing her thumb into the matching ring on her finger, spinning it around in a nervous habit.
“What about …” He touched his hand to his chest.
Sara mimicked the movement, feeling exposed as she found Jeffrey’s college ring beneath her thin shirt. “Something else,” she answered, not going into detail.
He nodded, still looking around the room. “I was found in a kitchen trashcan.” His words were abrupt, surprising. He explained, “At least that’s what my file says.”
Sara didn’t know how to respond, especially when he laughed, as if he’d made an off-color joke at a church social.
“Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.” He pulled a piece of pizza out of the box, catching the dripping cheese in his hand.
“It’s all right,” she told him, putting her hand on Bob’s head as the greyhound’s snout slid toward the coffee table. She couldn’t even comprehend what Will was saying. He might as well have told her he had been born on the moon.
She asked, “How old were you?”
He waited until he’d swallowed, then told her, “Five months.” He took another bite of pizza and she watched his jaw work as he chewed. Sara’s mind conjured up an image of Will Trent at five months old. He would’ve just started trying to sit up on his own and recognizing sounds.
He took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. “My mother put me there.”
“In the trashcan?”
He nodded. “Someone broke into the house—a man. She knew he was going to kill her, and probably me, too. She hid me in the trashcan under the sink, and he didn’t find me. I guess I must’ve known to be quiet.” He gave a crooked half-grin. “I was in Anna’s apartment today, and I looked in every trashcan. All the time, I was thinking about what you said this morning, about how the killer put the trash bags inside of the women to send a message, because he wanted to tell the world that they were trash, meaningless.”
“Obviously, your mother was trying to protect you. She wasn’t sending a message.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
“Did they …” Her mind wasn’t working well enough to ask questions.
“Did they catch the guy who killed her?” Will asked, finishing her sentence. He glanced around the room again. “Did they catch the person who killed your husband?”
He had asked a question, but he wasn’t looking for an answer. He was making the point that it didn’t matter, something Sara had felt from the moment she’d been told the man who’d orchestrated Jeffrey’s death was dead. She said, “Every cop who knows, that’s all they care about. Did they catch the guy.”
“Eye for an eye.” He pointed to the pizza. “Mind if I—”
He had finished half the pie. “Go ahead.”
“It’s been a long day.”
Sara laughed at the understatement. He laughed, too.
She pointed to his hand. “Do you want me to take care of that?”
He glanced at the wounds as if he’d just realized something was wrong. “What can you do?”
“You’ve waited too long for stitches.” She stood up to get her first aid kit from the kitchen. “I can clean it. You need to start some antibiotics so it doesn’t get infected.”
“What about rabies?”
“Rabies?” She tied up her hair with a band she found in the kitchen drawer, then hooked her reading glasses on her shirt collar. “The human mouth is pretty dirty, but it’s very rare—”
“I mean from rats,” Will said. “There were some rats in the cave where Anna and Jackie were kept.” He scratched his right arm again, and she realized now why he had been doing it. “You can get rabies from rats, right?”
Sara froze, her hand reaching up to take a stainless steel bowl from the cabinet. “Did they bite you?”
“No, they ran up my arms.”
“Rats ran up your arms?”
“Just two. Maybe three.”
“Two or three rats ran up your arms?”
“It’s really calming the way you keep repeating everything I say, but in a louder voice.”
She laughed at the comment, but still asked, “Were they acting erratic? Did they try to attack you?”
“Not really. They just wanted to get out. I think they were as scared of me as I was of them.” He shrugged. “Well, one of them stayed down. He was eyeballing me, you know, kind of watching what I was doing. He never came near me, though.”
She put on her reading glasses and sat beside him. “Roll up your sleeves.”
He took off his jacket and rolled up the shirtsleeve on his left arm, though he had been scratching his right. Sara didn’t argue. She looked at the scratches on his forearm. They weren’t even deep enough to bleed. He was probably remembering it a lot worse than it actually was. “I think you’ll be fine.”
“You’re sure? Maybe that’s why I went a little crazy today.”
She could tell he was only half kidding. “Tell Faith to call me if you start foaming at the mouth.”
“Don’t be surprised if you hear from her tomorrow.”
She rested the stainless steel bowl in her lap, then put his left hand in the bowl. “This might sting,” she warned, pouring peroxide over the open wounds. Will didn’t flinch, and she took his lack of reaction as an opportunity to do a more thorough job.
She tried to take his mind off what she was doing, and, frankly, her own curiosity was raised. “What about your father?”
“There were extenuating circumstances,” was all he offered. “Don’t worry. Orphanages aren’t as bad as Dickens would lead you to believe.” He changed the subject, asking, “Do you come from a big family?”
“Just me and my younger sister.”
“Pete said your dad’s a plumber.”
“He is. My sister worked in the business with him for a while, but now she’s a missionary.”
“That’s nice. You both take care of people.”
Sara tried to think of another question, something to say that would make him open up, but nothing would come to mind. She had no idea how to talk to someone who didn’t have a family. What stories of sibling tyranny or parental angst could you share?
Will seemed equally at a loss for words, or maybe he was just choosing to be silent. Either way, he didn’t speak until she was doing her best to cover the broken skin by crisscrossing several Band-Aids over his knuckles.
He said, “You’re a good doctor.”
“You should see me with splinters.”
He looked at his hand. Flexed his fingers.
She said, “You’re left-handed.”
He asked, “Is that a bad thing?”
“I hope not.” She held up her left hand, which she’d been using to clean his wounds. “My mother says it means you’re smarter than everybody else.” She started cleaning up the mess. “Speaking of my mother, I called her about the question you had—the apostle who replaced Judas? His name was Matthias.” She laughed, joking, “I’m pretty sure if you meet anyone by that name, you’ve probably found your
killer.”
He laughed, too. “I’ll put out an APB.”
“Last seen wearing a robe and sandals.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Don’t make light of it. That’s the best lead I’ve heard all day.”
“Anna’s not talking?”
“I haven’t talked to Faith since …” He waved his injured hand. “She would’ve called if anything came up.”
“She’s not what I thought,” Sara told him. “Anna. I know this is odd to say, but she’s very dispassionate. Unemotional.”
“She’s been through a lot.”
“I know what you mean, but it’s beyond that.” Sara shook her head. “Or maybe it’s my ego. Doctors aren’t used to being talked to as if they’re servants.”
“What did she say to you?”
“When I brought her baby to her—Balthazar—I don’t know, it was weird. I wasn’t expecting a medal by any means, but I thought she would at least thank me. She just told me that I could go away.”
Will rolled down his shirtsleeve. “None of these women have been particularly likable.”
“Faith said there might be an anorexia connection.”
“There might be. I don’t know a lot about it. Are anorexics generally horrible people?”
“No, of course not. Everyone is different. Faith asked me about the same thing this afternoon. I told her that it takes a very driven personality to starve yourself like that, but it doesn’t follow that they’re unkind.” Sara thought about it. “Your killer probably didn’t choose these women because they’re anorexic. He chooses them because they’re awful people.”
“If they’re awful people, then he’d have to know them. He’d have to have contact with them.”
“Are you finding any connections other than the anorexia?”
“All of them are unmarried. Two of them have kids. One of them hates kids. One of them wanted a kid, but maybe not.” He added, “Banker, lawyer, real estate broker and interior designer.”
“What kind of lawyer?”
“Corporate attorney.”
“Not real estate closings?”
He shook his head. “The banker didn’t work mortgages, either. She was in charge of community relations—doing fundraisers, making sure the president of the bank had his picture in the paper beside kids with cancer. That sort of thing.”
“They’re not in a support group?”
“There’s a chat room, but we can’t get into it without a password.” He rubbed his eyes with his hands. “It just goes in circles.”
“You look tired. Maybe a good night’s sleep will help you figure it out.”
“Yeah, I should go.” But he didn’t. He just sat there looking at her.
Sara felt the noise drain from the room, and the air got stuffy, almost hard to breathe. She was acutely aware of the pressure against her skin from the gold band around her fourth finger, and she realized that her thigh was brushing his.
Will was the first to break the spell, turning, reaching for his jacket off the back of the couch. “I really should go,” he told her, standing up to put on his jacket. “I need to find a prostitute.”
She was certain she had heard wrong. “I’m sorry?”
He chuckled. “A witness named Lola. She was the one who was taking care of the baby and she tipped us off about Anna’s apartment. I’ve been looking for her all afternoon. I think now that it’s nighttime, she’s probably emerged from her lair.”
Sara stayed on the couch, thinking it was probably best to keep some distance between them so Will didn’t get the wrong message. “I’ll wrap up some pizza for you.”
“That’s okay.” He went to the other couch and extracted Betty from the dog pile. He tucked her close to his chest. “Thanks for the conversation.” He paused. “About what I said …” He paused again. “Maybe best just to forget about it, okay?”
Her mind reeled with something to say that wasn’t flip or—worse—an invitation. “Of course. No problem.”
He smiled at her again, then let himself out of her apartment.
Sara sat back on the couch, hissing out a breath of air, wondering what the hell had just happened. She traced back through their conversation, wondering if she had given Will a sign, an unintentional signal. Or maybe there wasn’t anything there. Maybe she was reading too much into the look he gave her as they both sat on the couch. Surely, it didn’t help matters that three minutes before Will had arrived, Sara was thinking lewd thoughts about her husband. Still, she went back through it again, trying to figure out what had brought them to that uncomfortable moment, or if, in fact, there had been an uncomfortable moment at all.
It wasn’t until she remembered holding his hand over the bowl, cleaning out the wounds on his knuckles, that she realized that Will Trent was no longer wearing his wedding ring.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
—
Will wondered how many men in the world were trolling for prostitutes in their cars right now. Maybe hundreds of thousands, if not millions. He glanced at Betty, thinking he was probably the only one doing it with a Chihuahua in his passenger seat.
At least he hoped so.
Will looked at his hands on the steering wheel, the Band-Aids that covered the broken skin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten into a serious fight. It must have been when he was back at the children’s home. There was a bully there who had made his life miserable. Will had taken it and taken it, and then he had snapped, and Tony Campano had ended up with his front teeth broken out like a Halloween pumpkin.
Will flexed his fingers again. Sara had tried to do her best with the Band-Aids, but there was no way to keep them from falling off. Will tried to catalog the many times he had been to a doctor as a child. There was a scar on his body for just about each visit, and he used the marks to jog his memory, naming the foster parent or group home leader who had been courteous enough to break a bone or burn him or rip open his skin.
He lost count, or maybe he just couldn’t keep a thought in his head because all he kept coming back to was the way Sara Linton had looked when he first saw her in the doorway to her apartment. He knew she had long hair, but she’d always kept it up. This time, it was down—soft curls cascading past her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt that did a very good job of showing everything she had to great advantage. She was in socks, her shoes kicked off by the door. She smelled nice, too—not like perfume, but just clean and warm and beautiful. While she was fixing his hand, it had taken everything in him not to lean down and smell her hair.
Will was reminded of a Peeping Tom he’d caught in Butts County a few years ago. The man had followed women out to the parking lot of the local shopping mall, then offered them money to smell their hair. Will could still remember the news report, the local sheriff’s deputy visibly nervous in front of the news camera. The only thing the cop could come up with to tell the reporter was, “He’s got a problem. A problem with hair.”
Will had a problem with Sara Linton.
He scratched Betty’s chin as he waited for a red light to change. The Chihuahua had done a good job of ingratiating herself with Sara’s dogs, but Will was not foolish enough to think he had a snowball’s chance. No one had to tell him he wasn’t the sort of man Sara Linton would go for. For one, she lived in a palace. Will had remodeled his house a few years ago, so he knew the cost of all the nice things he could not afford. Just the appliances in her kitchen had run around fifty thousand dollars, twice the amount he had spent on his whole house.
Two, she was smart. She wasn’t obvious about it, but she was a doctor. You didn’t go to medical school if you were stupid, or Will would’ve been a doctor, too. It would take Sara no time at all to figure out he was illiterate, which made him glad that he wasn’t going to be spending any more time around her.
Anna was getting better. She would be out of the hospital soon. The baby was fine. There was no reason on earth for Will to ever see Sara Linton again unl
ess he happened to be at Grady Hospital when she was on shift.
He supposed he could hope he got shot. He’d thought Amanda was going to do exactly that when she’d taken him into the stairwell this afternoon. Instead, she had merely said, “I’ve waited a long time for your short hairs to grow in.” Not exactly the words you expect from your superior after you’ve beaten a man nearly senseless. Everyone was making excuses for him, everyone was covering for him, and Will was the only one who seemed to think that what he had done was wrong.
He pulled away from the light, heading into one of the seedier parts of town. He was running out of places to check for Lola, a revelation which troubled him, and not just because Amanda had told him not to bother coming in to work tomorrow unless he tracked the whore down. Lola had to have known about the baby. She had certainly known about the drugs and what was going on in Anna Lindsey’s penthouse apartment. Maybe she had seen something else—something she wasn’t willing to trade because it might put her life in danger. Or maybe she was just one of those cold, unfeeling people who didn’t care if a child was slowly dying. Word must have gotten around by now that Will was the kind of cop who beat people. Maybe Lola was afraid of him. Hell, there had been a moment in that hallway when Will was afraid of himself.
He had felt numb when he got to Sara’s apartment, like his heart wasn’t even beating in his chest. He was thinking of all the men who had raised their fists to him when he was a child. All the violence he had seen. All the pain he had endured. And he was just as bad as the rest of them for beating that doorman into the ground.
Part of him had told Sara Linton about the incident because he had wanted to see the disappointment in her eyes, to know with just one look that she would never approve of him. What he got instead was … understanding. She acknowledged that he had made a mistake, but she hadn’t assumed that it defined his character. What kind of person did that? Not the kind of person Will had ever met. Not the kind of woman Will could ever understand.
Sara was right about how it was easier to do something bad the second time. Will saw it all the time at work: repeat offenders who had gotten away with it once and decided they might as well roll the dice and try it again. Maybe it was human nature to push those boundaries. A third of all DUI offenders ended up being arrested for drunk driving a second time. Over half of all the violent felons captured were already released convicts. Rapists had one of the highest recidivist rates in the prison system.
The Will Trent Series 7-Book Bundle Page 114
